The number of Victorians evicted from their homes and seeking help from homelessness services has more than doubled in five years, during which time stamp duty collected by the state government almost doubled to $6 billion.

In the 2016-2017 financial year, 43,751 people sought assistance from charities and housing services because they had recently been evicted from their home, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. This was either through forcible eviction or rent or mortgage arrears.

The numbers have risen dramatically since 2012, when 17,930 people reported they had been evicted into homelessness.

Meanwhile, the amount of stamp duty collected by the state government during the same period rose from $3.77 billion to more than $6 billion. According to the mid-year state budget, the Victorian government is set to pocket $6.57 billion in stamp duty revenue this financial year.

The Council to Homeless Persons, the peak homelessness body in Victoria, said the two sets of figures were closely linked.

Related Articles

BRIGHTON residents have slammed the State Government for their plan to build nine-storey private apartment towers on housing commission land. Despite a chronic shortage of public properties in Melbourne, the Department of Health and Human […]

The Moree community will have the opportunity to get to know a wide range of services on offer throughout the shire at the inaugural Moree Community Connect Day next month. The Community Connect Day, to be held […]

Australian home owners have been celebrating the upside of a doubling of median house prices in Sydney and Melbourne in recent years. But the party may come to a crashing end when those same homeowners […]

Popular

The Saving Sydney package, announced on Friday by Greens MP and planning spokesman David Shoebridge, would also abolish priority precincts and restore planning powers to local councils, limiting “top-down planning”. All new Sydney developments would [...]